Teaching development grants final and financial report: Experiential learning through second life: Improving empathy and reducing stigma towards individuals with psychological problems

Most students may not have a chance to have face-to-face contact with persons with mental disorders when they learn about abnormal psychology. Without such experience, students may not be able to put themselves into the shoes of those with mental disorders and empathize with them. This may hinder their ability to understand the meaning of different abstract psychological concepts and situations. This TDG project aimed to develop a set of teaching resources with the use of Second Life, which is an interactive 3-D virtual reality playground that could create some experiences that are closely related to the features of mental disorders, so that students could have an opportunity to learn experientially. The current project therefore aimed at examining the beneficial learning effects of such realistic experience in understanding people with Schizophrenia. The students were divided into two groups: experimental group and control group (Second Life experience versus video lecture). The effectiveness of using this interactive teaching tool to enhance students' knowledge about schizophrenia, the ability to empathize with people with schizophrenia, learning motivation, and stigma against people with schizophrenia were assessed through quizzes, pre-test and post-test measures. The results of these assessments provided useful insights for the development and usage of different innovative e-learning tools.